Women's Labor Force Participation in Chile

The 2020 economic crisis had profound impacts on Chile’s labor market, triggering a decline in women’s labor force participation (LFP). The depth of the downturn and the accelerated emergence of other concurrent phenomena may have led to structural changes. This chapter explores the hypothesis that the determinants of women’s LFP have become more sensitive to specific variables following the crisis. Using household surveys conducted before and after the crisis, this study evaluates the impact of key variables influencing women’s probability of LFP in Chile, at the national and regional levels. The results reveal significant changes in the sensitivity to higher education and the number of children in the household, as well as varying effects of non-labor income across the country’s regions. These findings may have important implications for both national and regional public policy and raise new questions for future research.